I’m interested in that feeling of relief some of us get after taking our estradiol dose. I experience it as intense relief that washes over me and bathes me in joy. My color perception dramatically improves at the same time, it’s a very sudden shift.
I seem to only experience it when my blood levels are too low and the new dose enters the blood. With Divigel it’s after 30 minutes have passed, in my case, but only if me levels are low.
Some questions I have:
- If I don’t feel the relief, am I overdosed?
- If I do feel the relief, am I underdosed?
- Why do I and some feel the relief, while others have never felt it?
I don’t expect anyone to know the definitive answers, but maybe you can share your experience? I’m really interested in learning what this is all about.
This is a bit of a cop-out answer, but the effects of HRT vary hugely based on the person. The “relief” you are feeling might be placebo, might be due to biochemical dysphoria, or a bit of both.
When I was on injections, I definitely felt a bit crappy at the end of the week, and a lot better about 30 minutes after my dose.
When I was getting my dose for patches worked out, I felt what I can only describe as “testosterone anxiety”, which persisted as I slowly bumped up my dose over a couple of weeks and eventually went away when I got up to three patches. (Now I’m on spiro and back down to two, and things are fine). This was a different feeling to injections wearing off.
Now the only thing I notice is that I get four days of being really tired and bitchy pretty consistently every 25 days or so. I’m not going to speculate what that is, but since I’m on a very stable dose of two patches every two days, I don’t think it’s due to dosage.
That’s likely your menstruation cycle! Trans women have observed and experienced menstruation since HRT became a thing
We have all the parts needed to experience menstruation, just less of some of the tissues involved, so typically we experience weaker or even not noticeable periods. Some trans women do have very strong periods including period shits, cramps, and large mood swings. It’s also possible that how we take HRT affects how noticeable the period is. I’ts not well studied for obvious reasons.
Also, all the different ways of taking HRT have different half lives which is why you feel better or worse when low. Often doctors prescribe people valerate for injections but put people on on a 7 day injection cycle when the half life is 4.5 days, and don’t give people a high enough dose for them to have comfortable levels on day 6 and 7. Ideally valerate is instead taken every 5 days to avoid a very large dose and to avoid the 2 days of being too low.
With gel and pills the half life is very short and so you can notice the same day if you are a few hours late, but blockers will change the experience a lot ofc.